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Al Qaeda’s “Goebbels” to Be Released From Gitmo

He wore no swastika on his arm or skull and crossbones on his cap, but if ever there were an Al Qaeda “Goebbels,” Faiz Mohammed Ahmed al Kandari is him. Captured in December of 2001, while leading Al Qaeda fighters out of the Tora Bora section of Afghanistan into Pakistan, was a religious advisor to Usama bin Laden, and has spent the last 13 years of his life at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kandari, Kuwaiti citizen, is a religious leader, Al Qaeda recruiter and fighter, was a known associate of bin Laden. He is also known to be a university trained student of Islamic Studies (Sharia Law), and applied this knowledge when producing multi-media recruiting materials that included the success of the attacks of 9/11/01 in his appeals for young recruits to join the fight against the infidels. He indoctrinated Al Qaeda fighters, and spread the word of jihad, issuing fatwas even from Gitmo.

Surely, he would have made a great Nazi.

Why then, is his time at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, coming to an end?

The Daily Caller announced that he is slated for return to Kuwait, stating that “The [Periodic Review] Board determined the detainee’s threat can be adequately mitigated by the Kuwaiti government’s commitment to require and maintain the detainee’s participation in a rehabilitation program and to implement robust security measures to include monitoring and travel restrictions.”

Imagine if Joseph Goebbels, once named Reich Chancellor by Hitler himself before his suicide, had been captured and then, instead of being tried and then executed for war crimes, had been subsequently released to a German rehab program, promising to be good from now on?

As it was, Goebbels committed suicide, just as did his evil role model, Adolph Hitler. If only Kandari had been so bold he could have saved 13 years of incarceration. Apparently, his patience has paid off.

Obama era detainees, some of the “worst of the worst,” have been released for some of the most incredible reasons. The famous Taliban Five, known leaders of the Taliban, were released in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. Army soldier who walked away from his post in Afghanistan, came under Taliban control and was later accused of desertion.

How much longer will the American people tolerate this indignity and treason?

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

What part of this repeated exchange or release of known enemies is not treason?

Gitmo is neither corrections nor punishment, it is simply detention.

During WWII the U.S. held over 400,000 lawful combatant POW’s without one call for extra-legal privileges or trials for them. Why? The Geneva Conventions and Law of Land Warfare (Army FM 27-10) do not call for trials unless POW’s or unlawful combatant detainees (spies, saboteurs) were accused of war crimes. Captured soldiers who followed the rules were simply held “until the end of hostilities,” and then repatriated to their country of origin.

So too, should unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us be incarcerated, “until the end of hostilities.”

In fact it is VERY American to hold detainees until the end of hostilities. After the First Gulf War, U.S. forces held tens of thousands of lawful combatant Iraq soldiers who surrendered en mass rather than face the wrath of the world’s finest fighters. This was a smart move that kept them alive and fed until the end of combat activities in Operation Desert Storm – which lasted only ten days.

As per the Conventions, only days after the end of the conflict, Iraqi POW’s began to be repatriated.

What’s different now is that there are no lawful combatants being held at Gitmo. Captured for their intelligence value potential instead of being shot on the battlefield, all unlawful combatants being held at Gitmo are lucky to be alive.

U.S. forces do not train to run gulags or concentration camps. We train to provide detention and POW operations in war. So, when then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld told us in 2002, to treat Gitmo detainees “within the spirit of the Geneva Conventions,” he was making a two-fold statement. One, we recognize their legal status cannot be that of Prisoner of War because they did not follow the Geneva Conventions. And two, we will treat them with dignity and respect, within the spirit of Geneva, because we are the benevolent good guys.

“No one does [detention operations] better than the United States,” so said International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) physicians I worked with at Gitmo in 2002, and then later at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, after the abuse scandal there in 2005.

The current nonsense about closing Gitmo and moving the remaining detainees to the United States aside, it is treasonous at worst and pure folly at best to release any of them at this point.

As if by Miracle Grow, Islamists have become healthy and robust globally because of our lack of leadership and commitment in the Global War on Terror.

We must, like the Crusaders of Old Europe, and the Americans of the Barbary Wars, rise up in order to defeat the surging forces of evil that would destroy us.

Until all Islamists are dead, or no longer have the will or means to kill us we must defend ourselves. Gitmo is a small price to pay in that essential effort.